Ep. 62 | Ana Mendieta | Earth and Feminist Art Embodied at Tate Modern
What does the artist’s body do? No one pushes us to ask this more than the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta. Her excavated silhouettes in the landscape, where her body would at times lie, covered with petals or feathers, are but one of the actions and rituals that she performed during her short career. What did occur in her own body? Community? Communion? What was the origin and the purpose of her embodied art? And what is the medium for this kind of art, happening in and with the body of the artist?
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Celebrated for being a visionary eco-feminist, an activist against violence women, Ana Mendieta’s work is often obliterated by the sensationalism around it. The exhibition at Tate Modern feels like meeting the artist for the first time.
Art Etiquette Segment guest: Esther Stanford. Co-host of award winning podcast Limited Time Only (with Susie Riddell, WINNER: ‘BEST COMEDY MOMENT’ International Women In Podcast Awards 2025 sponsored by BBC SOUNDS), she is a sketch and TV writer. You can find her on Instagram, on YouTube, March House, a channel she has just launched where you can also find her podcast Conversations with Creatives. Or simply her website: ww.estherstanford.co.uk.
Segment: Brainstorm in a Teacup:
Come for the art, stay for the creative writing segment, where Joana reads short texts from her notebooks exposing her inner thoughts and unexpected fictional / poetic / non-fiction / flash writing.
Jingle: "Wunder", experimental poem by Joana P. R. Neves.
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Created & Hosted by Dr. Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary art field. Artistic director of Drawing Now Paris since 2018, she has worked across the industry, from the art market to education. She co-launched the art residency and project space Worlding in 2020. Exhibitionistas’ first year offered exhibition discussions with guest co-host Emily Harding; organically, it grew into a more experimental show exploring art topics, stories and interviews complemented by Joana’s publication Art Thinkosaurus on Substack. She champions ‘Art Wonderment’s’ embrace of complexity against the lure of ready-made opinions. A polyglot, she grew up in Lisbon, studied and lived in Paris, to finally settle in London with her artist husband, four children and two cats.
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Do you want to be a guest on Art Etiquette? Reach out: joana@exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Copyright: Joana P. R. Neves, 2026.
